Shelter - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 150981051X ISBN 13: 9781509810512

Publisher: Picador

Synopsis

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About this title

About the Author:

Jung Yun is a graduate of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her work has appeared in Tin House, The Best of Tin House: Stories and The Massachusetts Review. In 2011, her short story 'The Strange Genius of American Men' received an honourable mention for the Pushcart Prize. In 2010, she was awarded an Artist's Fellowship in fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Review:

This stunning literary novel is a page turner about family, belonging and making commitments you can live by * Reader's Digest * A history of violence lurks behind the walls of the Korean-American family in Jung Yun's Shelter. Kyung Cho is a biology professor who lives in the suburbs with his wife Gillian and young child. Haunted by spiralling debt, the family risks losing their house. Meanwhile his ageing parents are rich beyond anything their son could hope for, but they cared more about money than love, and Kyung grew up desperately unhappy. When Kyung's mother turns up naked and battered in the backyard, and his parents are no longer able to live on their own, he reluctantly takes them in. The reversal of fortune leads to dramatic and surprising revelations, dissecting questions of familial duty, betrayal and forgiveness. Jung Yun's Shelter weaves an intricately plotted intergenerational drama, delivered in cool spare prose. * Sydney Morning Herald * It seems as though every year a novel - and its author - appears out of nowhere and gets readers everywhere talking. This year that book is Shelter, by Korean American writer Jung Yun. * South China Morning Post * A powerful debut, full of thrills, secrets waiting to be discovered, and lies unwrapped * Los Angeles Review of Books * Jung Yun keeps it together through pitch-perfect but flawed narrator Kyung and a high-tension storyline. Such a thoughtful, emotional literary work is an unexpected page-turner. * Globe and Mail * In her intense debut, Yun explores the powerful legacy of familial violence and the difficulty of finding the strength and grace to forgive . . . This family drama [is] rife with tension and unexpected ironies. * Publishers Weekly * This work should find itself on best-of lists, among major award nominations, and in eager readers' hands everywhere. * Library Journal, Starred Review * In Shelter, Jung Yun takes Tolstoy's idea that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way and packages it in the most familiar expression of the American Dream: owning a home. What the parents and children in this novel discover is that they can neither take shelter in their houses nor their families. This is domestic drama at its best, a gripping narrative of secrets and revelations that seized me from beginning to end. -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of The Sympathizer A fluidly written debut novel that explores violence and its effects on one immigrant family . . . [A] layered, sometimes surprising debut . . . A diverse and nuanced cast of characters seeks shelter from pain and loneliness in this valiant portrayal of contemporary American life. * Kirkus Reviews * This absorbing, suspenseful debut tracks familial obligation and the legacy of trauma . . . The narrative piles on surprises at a tightly controlled clip, as [Kyung's] family is forced to confront the past and the price it has paid for stability. * The New Yorker * The combination of grisly James Patterson thriller and melancholic suburban drama shouldn't work at all. Yet Ms. Yun pulls it off. Kyung is petulant and unlikeable, but he's also psychologically unstable. The proximity of his parents and the atmosphere of grief and panic launch him on a spiral of self-destruction that's impossible to turn away from. The novel grows darker and darker, until all its internal contradictions are eclipsed by an ending as disturbing and bereft as anything you'll read this year. * Wall Street Journal * Yun's debut may be a family drama, but it has all the tension of a thriller. It's a sharp knife of a novel - powerful and damaging, and so structurally elegant that it slides right in . . . Yun has written the rare novel that starts with a strong premise and gets better and richer with every page, each scene perfectly selected, building on the last. The language, at first blush plain and functional, reveals itself as the right medium for a story of unusual urgency - not simple but bony, spare and precise . . . Shelter is a marvel of skill and execution, tautly constructed and played without mercy. * Los Angeles Times * Gripping . . . Yun shows how, although shelter doesn't guarantee safety and blood doesn't guarantee love, there's something inextricable about the relationship between a child and a parent . . . We may each respond in our own way, but I'll go ahead and assume that a good amount of folks, regardless of the pain they may have experienced from bad mothers and fathers, and regardless of cultural traditions, will feel the pull to help save their parents. "Shelter" is captivating in chronicling this story. * New York Times * Shocking, and very poignant. * Times Literary Supplement * Replete with secrets, misunderstandings and guilt, this is a powerful novel about what home really means. * Daily Mail * Outstanding . . . Will be one of the novels of 2016. -- John Boyne

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• ISBN 10: 150981051X
• ISBN 13: 9781509810512
• Binding: Paperback